The Most Photographed Barn in America

We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. (…) Soon the sign started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. All people had cameras.

No one sees the barn. (…) They are taking pictures of taking pictures.

Don Delillo, White Noise (1985)

This is an excerpt from Don Delillo’s White Noise, which I’ve read a couple of years ago for the first time. When this segment about a place that only lives through the cameras of countless tourists came up, I thought that it was a perfect representation of our Instagram culture.

I didn’t have a clue that the book was first published in 1985 (shame on me). That’s 25 years before Instagram came to life, and 32 years before I took my trip to Rome, where I struggled to have a good sight of the Fontana di Trevi through all the tourists armed with their massive cameras and cellphones.

What I figured then was what Delillo did way before me. Most people don’t travel to Rome to see the fountain, they want to check it out their bucket lists and upload proof to their Instagram accounts. Then they move to the Vatican to check a few other life goals out and never see those photos again. It sounds really weird when you stop to think about it, right?

We’ve agreed to be part of a collective perception. It literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism.

Don Delillo, White Noise (1985)

In 2019, the Notre Dame Cathedral was badly damaged in a massive fire, and in some way, we all reacted to it. Some were deeply sad because they wouldn’t be able to visit it anymore, while others shared their own visual proof that they already checked that site once, so it was kind of ok that it was destroyed.

There’s something scary about all of this, as these kinds of sites become, as Delillo puts it, a simulacrum. The Fontana di Trevi and the Notre Dame Cathedral don’t really matter, we all just agreed that it’s an important place that deserves to be visited and photographed. Collectively, we made this happen.

I was surprised by seeing such a description in White Noise, but when I think about it, this has been going on for some time now. I mean, a really good time. Back to a few centuries b.C. when it’s believed that Herodotus and Callimachus made early lists of the seven wonders of the world.

Now considered wonders of the ancient world, since we decided to replace them with new wonders, this was one of many times in which we’ve decided to give special, abstract, meaning to already historically relevant sites. Surely, neither Herodotus or Callimachus were taking many pictures back then, but they wanted everyone else to know those places were more important than others.

It’s in someone’s best interest to keep this going for as long as possible, and that’s why the new wonders came along in 2007. Out of the seven original places declared in the distant past, only the Pyramids of Giza are still partially standing and generating an insane amount of money through tourism. We needed new monuments that people could actually visit and spend their money on. It’s pure, highly efficient, marketing.

What was the barn like before it was photographed? What did it look like, how was it different from the other barns, how was it similar to other barns?

Don Delillo, White Noise (1985)

You know what, it doesn’t matter if the most photographed barn is just a regular barn! Visits to places such as Petra or the Taj Mahal skyrocketed after they were declared to be wonders in 2007, and now they are even at risk due to the number of people that visit them every year. I’m not questioning their importance as historical sites, but that’s definitely not what’s so special about them anymore.

If for some unknown reason it was announced that the Pyramids of Giza would collapse if they had just one more visitor, everyone would rush there just to get one last picture before it went down.

Tourism as we know it is all about the burning desire that people have to check the most items off their bucket lists in the least amount of time. And to make those lists up, they count on someone to point out what’s important and what isn’t. It’s that collective agreement that Delillo mentions in his book.

If you want a great example of this agreement in action, try visiting the Louvre. In the museum’s permanent exhibit, there are six Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings, all very real and legitimate. Out of the six, only one isn’t met with the same indifference as most of the other less known artists’ paintings. Want to guess which one is the most popular?

Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies.

Don Delillo, White Noise (1985)

It’s a very particular feeling that goes beyond art and tourism. It’s something else that drives us to what’s popular and universally accepted as important. As much as we’d like to believe, it’s not something new that came with the technological revolution either. What changed since Herodotus was the ease of access, the means to get proof and the channels to share it with everyone.

Not everyone is waiting for the next wonder to be named to decide next year’s vacations, and it’s ok to be in any side of the spectrum. However, it’s undeniably more comfortable to just follow the collective agreement stating what are the locations worthy of being visited and check them out as soon as possible.

It’s also easier to perceive monuments through the lens of a cellphone and never spend much time thinking about it before or after a trip. Sharing it on Instagram provides that instant gratification that makes it all worth for some, so it just depends on what each one’s goal is.

Ultimately, it’s all a matter of answering a simple question and taking your own conclusions:

What would you value the most — the most photographed barn in America or your own photograph of the barn?